The Age of Jihad

The Age of JihadPatrick Cockburn

There have been many observers who have looked at the wreckage of the post-Arab Spring Middle East and wondered went wrong (I’ve reviewed some of them here). During this time Patrick Cockburn has been a better situated observer than most, and his on-the-ground reporting, particularly from Iraq and Syria, provides an antidote to the state propaganda usually retailed in the news. He is both a resourceful journalist (he recommends visiting military hospitals to talk to eyewitnesses who are now lying around bored out of their skulls) and a brave man. With the advent of the Internet insurgent forces no longer need the media any more, which makes newsmen useful to groups like ISIS only as kidnapping targets.

As for what went wrong, a big part of the answer is that the local economies failed. As one Iraqi minister puts it, “if the Sunni could just get jobs and pensions all this fury would ebb away.” That’s a remedy that would go a long way to curbing the anger everywhere these days. But a more cynical answer would be that for many of the different groups involved nothing has gone wrong. One of Cockburn’s conclusions is that nationalism in the Middle East has been replaced by sectarian and tribal politics, and the undermining of nationalist projects has long been a Western goal in the region.

In addition, chaos has bred opportunity for groups looking to draw on U.S. or other foreign assistance, while as for the West, isn’t it better that “they” kill each other over there than us over here? Cockburn doesn’t buy into conspiracy theories, but he can see instances in all this where they plausibly gain traction. It’s a sad fact that even a humanitarian disaster as profound as we see in today’s Middle East is not without profit or usefulness to some. Given the dynamics we might expect desperate conditions to continue for a while yet.